Wednesday, November 15, 2017

November 15, 1953 – Dedication of the $1 million
Edgewood Junior High School is held in Highland Park. Although the school has
been open since September, this is the first chance that the public has had to
view the facility which was for a number of years the subject of considerable
debate in the north shore community. A
referendum for the school was first approved in 1948, but the Voters League
protested the construction of the school at the time, asserting that the
student population of School District 108 was not growing as quickly as had
been anticipated. A second referendum
was approved in October, 1951 and construction finally kicked off in July of
1952. With an enrollment of 487 students
it is expected that the new school will meet the needs of the expanding
Sherwood Forest section as well as other developments in the southern section
of the town for the next five years.

November 15, 1931 – Chicago Airport, today’s Midway International Airport, opens in ceremonies held in front of the new $100,000 passenger terminal at Sixty-Second Street and Cicero Avenue. The head of the Illinois Aeronautics Commission, Reed G. Landis, presents Mayor Anton Cermak with the state’s first state airport license. Also on hand are M. C. Meigs, the chairman of the Chicago Aero Commission and Walter Wright, the city’s superintendent of parks and aviation, the man who led the construction of the $774,000 airport. The highlight of the event is the demonstration of the use of in-flight radio as Pilot S. J. Nelson of United Airlines flies over the airport and broadcasts a message that can be heard over the terminal’s public address system. At the conclusion of the ceremony Mayor Cermak takes his four grandchildren on a plane ride, courtesy of Century Air Lines.